Bill Hand: Monday is the anniversary of Palace's groundbreaking

Bill Hand, Sun Journal Staff

Sunday

Aug 25, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM

Monday marks the day exactly 246 years ago when some Philadelphia bumpkin laid the foundation stone for Tryon Palace. I’m guessing it was a Philadelphia bumpkin. After all, John Hawks, who designed the magnificent edifice whose avatar we all know and love today, couldn’t find a lot of skilled labor in New Bern, so he sent off to the City of Brotherly Love for workers.

Monday marks the day exactly 246 years ago when some Philadelphia bumpkin laid the foundation stone for Tryon Palace. I’m guessing it was a Philadelphia bumpkin. After all, John Hawks, who designed the magnificent edifice whose avatar we all know and love today, couldn’t find a lot of skilled labor in New Bern, so he sent off to the City of Brotherly Love for workers.

I don’t know if they did the groundbreaking thing, where high officials give lofty speeches then grab a shovel that’s been spray-painted gold and, standing in a neat line, turn up a chunk of earth. If they did, I’ll bet William Tryon himself gripped one shovel, Hawks another, maybe Richard Cogdell, the incredibly rich New Bern merchant, grabbed another. Maybe Atticus Jones, the anonymous letter writer who would trash the good governor Tryon over the coming years, stood to one side shouting: “Hire local labor!”

Perhaps the governor stepped forward then, describing his fine “government building,” then grinned slyly and added, “If you think this is great, wait till you see the history center they put up in about 240 years!”

And perhaps Caleb Bradham’s ancestors stood about, murmuring “Amen.”

The original Palace (it burned down in 1798) was one of the most controversial buildings in colonial America. When William Tryon first arrived as governor in 1765, North Carolina had no official capital. We were pretty much the backwoods of America in those days — the pesky Outer Banks made settlement fairly difficult, and our conceited brethren in Virginia and South Carolina didn’t help things along in that line.

The governor pretty much ran things from where he liked best. Arthur Dobbs, the man who preceded Tryon, lived in Brunswick, a town that no longer exists since the British destroyed it in the Revolutionary War.

The General Assembly met in various towns, moving up and down the coast while the colony’s vital records lumbered about in a wagon.

Tryon was determined to change this backward situation. When he came from England, he hauled along the architect Hawks specifically to design a governmental building. Tryon also chose New Bern as the location for his capital.

I’m not sure of his reasoning, but the town was pretty centrally located halfway up and down the coast. It was even roughly central east-to-west: The land where Raleigh stands today was pretty much seen as wild frontier.

Tryon took a couple of years to get around to building the edifice. He was tied up with other matters for a while — for instance, the Stamp Tax was a boiling-over issue when he first arrived.

But in January 1767, the General Assembly approved the new building, whose first floor would be an office of governmental business and whose second floor would serve as residential space for the governor, his wife and young daughter. Along with that approval was a poll tax — and therein came the controversy.

Tryon’s building would be glorious — it would even rival the fancy mansion in Williamsburg. Many people thought it was awfully fancy for a little rural place like North Carolina. And the settlers who lived inland deeply resented its high cost. For one thing, they lived too far away to get any benefit from it, in their opinion. And cash — which the poll tax required — was very hard to come by. Most trading among the common folk in those days was “in kind” — you shoe my horse and I’ll give you this fine chicken.

But Tryon, secure in his popularity along the coast, pushed on. On Jan. 9, he signed a contract with Hawks to have the building done in three years. The work began on Aug. 26. By January of the next year, the governor was back before the assembly, asking for more money and taxes to cover, which it gave, approving a ceiling price (including ceiling, I guess) of £15,000.

Despite setbacks such as a major hurricane, the Palace was completed in 1770. The Tryons moved in June 7, 1770, and would live there barely a year before moving on to New York.

Contact Bill Hand at newbernhistory@yahoo.com.

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